Prior to the present invention, as a practical matter the crab commercial industry has continued to rely principally on the slow, time-consuming laborious and expensive manual meat-picking methods and utensils used down through the centuries. This has been and is true because of the lack of any practical and/or effective equipment that might be used as a reasonable substitute. This is true even though there exist various patents to mechanism that because of not satisfying the above-noted needs of practicality, cost savings, effectiveness and the like have not provided the needed relief in the crab industry, whereby meat-production has remained very low and the cost of crab-meat has remained very high.
Typical U.S. patents include the Reinke U.S. Pat. No. 3,151,351 directed to adjustable crab-holding mechanisms on movable workstations for manual-working on crabs, and Benoit U.S. Pat. No. 3,388,422 to a manual foot-press compressible of meat-containing shell on a flat-seat by an arcuate press brought-down from above, and Altman U.S. Pat. No. 3,251,091 to a horizontal revolving table having press-positions of upper and lower mating press-surfaces of conforming shapes of particular design, and Huebetter U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,256 providing, like Benoit patent-above, a flat horizontal base on which a meat containing crab rest while compressed by an upper arcuate press--here of a rocker-type arrangement.